1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a fixing device and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
In an image forming apparatus such as a copier or a printer, for example, a recording medium with a toner image transferred is subjected to heating and pressurizing to carry out fixing processing of fixing the toner image on the recording medium.
The fixing device employed for the fixing processing is composed of e.g. a belt member which is heated by a heating source such as a heater and also rotatably stretched by a fixing roll, and a pressurizing roll which pressurizes the fixing roll via the belt member. In such a fixing device, a nipping zone of heating and pressurizing the recording medium is formed at a pressure-contact position between the fixing roll and the pressurizing roll; the tone image transferred on the recording medium suffers from the heating and pressurizing operation while the recording medium passes the nipping zone so that it is fixed on the recording medium.